On the effect of localization errors on geographic face routing in sensor networks

In the absence of localization errors, geographic routing - using a combination of greedy forwarding and face routing - has been shown to work correctly and efficiently. The effects of location errors on geographic routing have not been studied before. In this work we provide a detailed analysis of the effects of location errors on the correctness and performance of geographic routing in static sensor networks. First, we perform a micro-level behavioural analysis to identify the possible protocol error scenarios and their conditions and bounds. Then, we present results from an extensive simulation study of GPRS and GHT to quantify the performance degradation due to location errors (of 10% of the radio range or less) can in fact lead to incorrect (non-recoverable) geographic routing with noticeable performance degradation. We then introduce a simple modification for face routing that eliminates probable errors and leads to near perfect performance.